It took an Israeli developer just six months of development to sell his vibecoding startup Base44 for $80 million

According to TechCrunch, Shlomo worked on the startup with eight employees, who will receive $25 million of the $80 million.

In six months as a standalone company, Base44 has grown to 250,000 users, reaching 10,000 users in its first three weeks. According to Shlomo’s posts on X and LinkedIn, the company was profitable, earning $189,000 in profit in May after covering the high costs of LLM tokens.

«Base44 is an ambitious experiment that helps everyone, regardless of technical knowledge, create software without coding», — said the startup’s founder.

The startup offers vibecoding tools for people who are new to programming. Users enter text commands, and the platform creates complete applications with a database, storage, authentication, analytics, and integration. It also supports email, text messaging, and maps, and has a plan to further develop to provide enterprise-grade security. The project is powered by Anthropic’s Claude LLM, due to its better performance and token value than OpenAI’s solutions.

Maor Shlomo was already well-known in the Israeli startup community for his previous venture, Explorium, a data analytics company backed by Insight Partners. His brother also co-founded an AI security startup, Token Security, which raised $20 million led by Notable Capital (formerly GGV Capital) and a group of Israeli tech angels. He quickly secured partnership deals for Base44 with major Israeli tech companies such as eToro and Similarweb.

«This is a huge milestone for us and an exciting step towards our goal: to help anyone easily turn ideas into reality. From day one, we’ve loved moving fast and breaking barriers. Now, with Wix’s support, we’ll move even faster and think bigger. And don’t worry: Base44 is still Base44. Same platform, same vision, just supercharged,» the startup commented on the deal with Wix.

Despite the hefty $80 million, Wix is ​​believed to have acquired a proven, fast-growing, local web coding platform for a relatively small sum due to its youth. OpenAI previously paid $3 billion for Windsurf, which was founded in 2021.

Wix already offers professional-looking, no-coding websites, and adding a lucrative AI-powered web coding product to its offerings is the next logical step for the company.

«Wix is ​​a natural partner for Base44. I know it sounds like a cliché that all founders repeat after an acquisition, but I truly believe it’s 100% true in this case. One product category, one vision, one DNA, one obsession with customers. Many shared user profiles. Given the similarities, the decision to join forces was easier than I expected», — says Maor Shlomo.

He stated that despite this, the decision to sell the company was not easy for him, but he believes that it will provide better support and faster product development.

Recall that Swedish AI startup Lovable, which specializes in vibe coding, is in talks to raise at least $100 million in funding at a valuation of $1.5 billion or more from U.S. investors. This could make it one of the largest new players in this field in the European market.

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